Run Fast or Get Left Behind: Your AI Survival Guide

The digital revolution waits for no one. While some businesses stand paralyzed by uncertainty, others are racing ahead, integrating artificial intelligence into their core strategies and reimagining what's possible. 

This fascinating exploration reveals how AI has evolved from a theoretical concept to an essential business component, with narrow AI applications, generative capabilities, and the emerging frontier of agentic AI poised to transform workplaces forever.

TLDR:

• Businesses need to incorporate AI into core strategy including retention models, analytics, and next-best-action recommendations
• Managing digital labor requires different skills compared to managing human teams
• Digital transformation requires creating a culture of continuous change that is intelligent, creative and digitally enabled
• 95% correlation exists between better decision-making and better business outcomes
• Future trends include quantum computing reaching commercial viability by 2029

What happens when your workforce includes both humans and digital labor? Managing this hybrid team requires entirely new approaches to leadership, performance metrics, and organizational structure. 

We're moving toward what might be called "headless organizations" where technology drives operations, allocates tasks, and directs human workers raising profound questions about workplace dynamics and customer experience. As traditional roles evolve, exciting new positions are emerging: agentic AI architects, data strategists, generative AI content engineers, and more.

The future belongs to organizations that build cultures of continuous change intelligent, creative, and digitally enabled. Data analytics combined with AI provides both insight and foresight, with a 95% correlation between improved decision-making and better business outcomes. 

And on the horizon? Quantum computing reaching commercial viability by 2029, promising capabilities beyond our current imagination. Those who embrace change and invest in both technology and people will thrive, while those practicing "digital Darwinism" - hoping technology is just a passing fad- risk extinction. 

As one poignant observation notes: "You can choose comfort or you can choose growth. Both are painful, but growth in the longer term is a lot less painful than sitting doing nothing." Which will you choose?

Key times and takeaways: 

• Introduction: 00:00 - Exclusive Interview with Kieran Gilmurray
• Question 1: 00:22 - How has AI forced businesses to adapt their leadership approach? 
• Question 2: 04:16 - What’s the secret to successful digital transformation?
• Question 3: 07:29 - How can businesses use data analytics for a competitive advantage? 
• Question 4: 09:47 - Looking to the future of work, what are your predictions? 

Chapters

• 0:00 AI's Growing Role in Business
• 4:41 Digital Transformation: Creating a Culture of Change
• 7:35 Analytics for Better Decision-Making
• 10:01 The Future: AI and Quantum Computing
• 13:57 Choose Growth Over Comfort

Transcript

Kieran Gilmurray: 0:00

Over the next couple of years, ai is going to take on an increasingly important role in businesses. We're talking about basic AI, narrow AI, which is about 60% of what we're currently doing, then generative AI and then particularly agentic AI. Yeah well, they're still learning. Do you know what I mean? There's lots of businesses I think there's a great deal of FOMO out there where everybody believes everybody else has, you know, raced ahead and some have and some haven't, but it really is a race, to a degree, to catch up and to learn. At this moment, I think businesses are going to have to start to look at, you know, ai as being a core part of the strategy. Now we're talking about narrow AI in general. You know retention models, analytic models, next, best action. They're going to have to look at generative AI and see what part that plays in, you know, the construction of content, media, the analysis of the business, but they're also now going to have to look at agentic ai, which is digital labor built on top of large language models that can actually take over a lot of the roles that particular staff members are doing. So once you start looking at all of this, you're going actually we may be in a stage where we're very soon going to have, you know, not just human labor but a lot of digital labor built into a business. Now, nothing unusual there. Amazon factories are full of it. Lots of of people have put agentic labor into workplaces already, but it leads to a different set of skills you need as a manager, and how I manage a person is very different than how I manage a robot. How I manage a person plus a digital worker, and the performance metrics and the KPIs and the goals that I set and the strategies that I put in place. They're all new skills that people need to learn, including AI put in place. They're all new skills that people need to learn, including ai.

Kieran Gilmurray: 1:47

Now, if ai is going to take on, you know, a huge proportion of work, then you could end up, as I call it, a headless organization like uber, which is basically means you know people are controlled by, you know technology that's driving them, pointing in particular directions, allocating the next body of work. What does that mean? As you transition, you know your workplace to that. What does it mean for your customers? If you look at uber and some of the things that have come up against over the last numbers of years, you know, have I decided policies that make up for some of technology's fragilities? Or or when it goes wrong, if I'm dpd, you know someone has went in, filled in a chatbot that I've used, you know, to try and reduce traffic or an improved service, and if someone tells it to swear and it does you know how am I going to cope with all of these things and learn all of this tech and manage my staff? You know there's so many questions that we are learning answers to, and not only that.

Kieran Gilmurray: 2:31

If ai is going to do a lot of what we're doing, then how do we develop, you know, the skills that ai can't the curiosity, the agility, the adaptability, the coaching and mentorship? You know how do I learn the data, the ai skills themselves? How do I learn critical and analytical thinking? Where do I know to use technology decision insight? How do I actually cooperate or co-compete with my you know previous competitors, cooperation or competition, how to open, draw bridges and cooperate in an increasingly, you know, intelligent and digital world. How do I plan for, you know, my new career, the new careers inside of businesses like agentic ai architects, data strategist, you know, generative ai content engineers, agentic labor leader. You know how do I maybe, like a modern in the world, actually start to restructure my leadership team? So my chief hr officer is now, you know, taking on the role of a chief technology officer as well.

Kieran Gilmurray: 3:24

How do I get people excited about new roles like an ai, network optimization engineer and all of the things that are going to come in the very distant future? So it shouldn't scare people too much that they need change. Enough motivation that the world is moving. You need to move with it. You need to be very agile. But how do I let everybody know what I know? How do I get everybody excited? How do I build a change management, a people strategy program, whilst running myself to keep up, to learn all of these things? So there's a lot businesses and business leaders have to do to adjust their own learning, their own leadership model, the structure of their organization. Who does the work, be it digital or human labor, and, and, and, and. And. My biggest thing is get excited about it. We'll get started now. So it's not one thing, it's a whole host of things, but that's what make life's, that's what makes fun and business fun as well as mad, as it seems that the basic secret that nobody really talks about is never getting there in the first place, and I need to explain that because that seems slightly odd.

Kieran Gilmurray: 4:33

Businesses that tend to need to digitally transform have got themselves in a position where they're very analog today, but AI itself is a 80-year-old overnight success story. Ai itself is a 80-year-old overnight success story. The term itself was invented in 1956 when a group of scientists went to Dartmouth in the US to recreate the human mind and body and faculties and then discovered that they actually couldn't. So you know, if you are in a digital transformation and a major digital transformation space, you technically haven't been watching what's been happening in the market for the last 80 years or, in particular, in the last 10 or 15 years or even in the last five years. But look, let's take it for granted. Some companies have got to build, you know, change as part of the system, innovation as part of their DNA, then willingness to be agile and try things and make mistakes and break things and grow and do it. But if they're in that situation, then not suddenly having a digital transformation plan you've now got one.

Kieran Gilmurray: 5:28

Then you really need to build that culture, you know, not just recognizing or thinking that this is a project that's got a beginning and an end, but I constantly need to create a culture of continuous change. You know that's intelligent, in other words, using ai or gen ai or or intelligent automation. That's creative, you know, again, using gen ai or other tools or techniques. That's going to allow me to innovate and keep ahead of my competition. You know, it's digitally enabled, where I'm using cloud and sas and the gen tic for my delivery model and I've got, you know, a people strategy that's bringing everyone on the journey. You know, and again, you may need to have the guts guts as a leader to tell some of the people that they're not actually coming on the journey ahead, but facing that up rather than handing it across to your CHRO and not chucking transformation at your tech team. This is too important to do all those things.

Kieran Gilmurray: 6:15

So if you are in the position where you know you now need to digitally transform, use this as a call to action. You know, know, your burning platform this is look, yeah, we've got stuck. We are analog. We now need to move, you know, more quickly than we've ever moved before. But how do we create that culture going forward with change, innovation, creativity, intelligence, customer delivery, using digital channels and our staff's ability to work, you know, and our career pathing of those individuals to allow the business, people and tech strategy to merge over the next couple of years is continually involving, so we don't get bored eating the same cake.

Kieran Gilmurray: 6:50

So there's there's not one secret secret is don't get there in the first place, but if you do get into that situation, make all those things happen. And the next secret is don't fall back on that. You know, we'll just keep doing what we've always done, because the world is moving too quickly and it won't move around you. But if you need to digitally transform, get your tech, get your people, get your processes, get all those working together and then create a flywheel that guarantees, hopefully, the goodness, your success going forward. But become a learning business as well, because there's lots you will learn, some things you will throw away currently, some things you will throw away forever, and lots you will do and it will be done right, but don't ever fall behind again.

Kieran Gilmurray: 7:26

Is the is the secret sauce? Yeah, well, go back to what you can get from data analytics, and I say, say, data analytics combined with, you know, ai and other automation tooling. So, at the most basic level, I can get the what and the why. In other words, I can get descriptive and diagnostic analytics. You know, why are customers coming to us? How many customers do we have, why are customers leaving? And that's the. You know what I describe as the insight piece, and even knowing those numbers, I can make better decisions as to how many products I need to order, how many people I need staff, my contact center, or or, or a whole host of things that, believe it or not, in this day and age, even the basics some companies don't have.

Kieran Gilmurray: 8:11

But the real skill is how do I get foresight? In other words, how do I get predictive analytics in place, which is using AI and machine learning and all sorts of other things like and or um neural networks to forecast forward what might happen in the future? So, in other words, if everything stays the way it stays, then percentage over time. What does the foresight look like? So now I'm making the decision fully aware of all of the impacts that it's going to have going forward over the next period of time to a high degree of certainty, and then I can go well, actually, I've now got insight and I've got predictive foresight, but how do I get prescriptive foresight? In other words, using AI models to determine. Look, I want to end up over here. What do I need to do today to make those decisions?

Kieran Gilmurray: 8:52

So data analytics allows you insight and foresight, and if you make better decisions and this is involved you know you need to be really curious to look at these decisions. That's a very human trait, not an AI trait. Then what we're taught is that you know there's a 95% correlation between better decision making and better outcomes. So who wouldn't want to make better business decisions every day that lead to a 95% success chance? The other 5% left over is for just uncertainty. That is always available. But rather than a 50-50 guesswork, I want the insight and foresight, with brilliant people making great decisions every day that are going to result in a far higher likelihood of success. So why wouldn't you want it? So how can businesses use analytics to get competitive advantage, get the foresight, the insight you need, train people how to make better decisions, lead to better business outcomes every time compared to anyone else.

Kieran Gilmurray: 9:54

Someone once said to me I predict that whatever I predict probably won't happen, but no, let's look at some of the trends that are there. Over the next couple of years, ai is going to take on an increasingly important role in businesses and we're talking about basic AI, narrow AI, which is about 60% of what we're currently doing, then generative AI and then particularly agentic AI, which is digital labor coming in at a pace that will disrupt like we've never seen before. I think if you look bigger picture and IBM did an announcement recently talking about quantum computing coming to realistic what I describe as business commercial, not just large enterprise commercial by 2029, then we're going to see a lot of quantum computing coming in the next couple of years. Now, if you combine quantum computing with AI, can you imagine the intelligence or benefit that we will actually get? You know, things that our brightest minds can't even imagine or imagination can't forecast at this moment in time. So I would say the big trend, you know AI, agentic labor, quantum computing if we get all of those things right, it's amazing.

Kieran Gilmurray: 10:53

Now, that's not going to say that won't be without impact, because some companies will look at this as an opportunity to reduce workforce, make better decisions. You know, if you look at some of the missings or musings around, you know onboarding of new staff everybody will use a gen ai robot rather than hire new staff or the reverse that they'll kill their main staff and businesses that are costing them a lot of money. They'll give a very junior person, you know, ai. They'll be better than the senior staff. So there's, there's so many comments, but ultimately this is going to be disruptive. It's going to disrupt, you know, those individuals whose jobs can be automated, can be digitized. It'll disrupt labor markets and education markets, because now, if we get these large language models right and if we use ai and quantum computing to come up with solutions for us, then a lot of what we're paid for currently, which is, you know, the thinking roles, will be disrupted. Now, does that worry you? Does that excite you? Probably it's somewhere in between the two.

Kieran Gilmurray: 11:45

I go back in the day and I sort of look at American presidents like Kennedy or Obama in their exit speeches, who said automation is going to kill all jobs. I look at you know that was Obama. Kennedy was saying that computing technology, which he meant mainframe, is going to ruin jobs. But what we discovered is that human creativity is amazing. Human creativity is amazing. We have created more jobs and more opportunities and more new careers than you know we. We have broken and things will get left behind. So today there's far less saddlers than there are software engineers. In the future, there might be far less software engineers and a lot more, you know, verbal vibe, computing business people. So, again, it shouldn't worry us.

Kieran Gilmurray: 12:22

The key bit Do you really want to be doing what you're doing in five years time, or would you rather AI, quantum computing and a whole load of technology took the robot out of you, freed you up to do more amazing work, to do the creative human things that you would enjoy, or something else? Those who embrace the future, who are open to change, have agility, you know, in their own learning, never mind their own businesses won't suffer from what I call AI or digital Darwinism, which is those business that hope the world is changing. They'll not do anything at all, and I don't wish that on anyone, but I do see it a lot. Look, this is a fad. This isn't a fad. Look, you know technology well, it'll go away. It won't go away. You know, am I going to buy, you know, a headset that allows me to see a cartoon body? Know, that was nonsensical. Was I going to buy blockchain at the prices it's at at the moment? I can't work that one out myself, but this is a different era. Digital tech works. Saas works, cloud works, ai works, you know agentics works. So don't practice digital Darwinism.

Kieran Gilmurray: 13:20

But my man is look, if you're a business that's constantly agile, constantly changing, constantly investing in your tech and your people, constantly looking ahead and testing and trying things, you will succeed. It doesn't need to be that complicated. For me, it's one of the most exciting times ever, if you put your head up and don't put your head down in the sand. So look, the future's uncertain. Certain key trends will happen. Ai will be a massive one of those and all its variations. But I would suggest a trend that I've seen over the decades is we will survive as humans. Those of us who embrace change make more productive, more valuable things. Those that don't, they'll probably struggle, and I wish that no one. So if this is a call to arms to tell people to move, please move folks. Run and run fast and keep running over the length and breadth of your career. Someone once said to me you can choose comfort or you can choose growth. Both are painful, but, trust me, growth in the longer term is a lot less painful than sitting doing nothing.